


A Circle of Strength and Love

by bluflamingo



Category: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Genre: 5 Things, Background Relationships, Character Death Fix, F/F, F/M, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:16:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2804132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluflamingo/pseuds/bluflamingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Hansel and Gretel (and Edward) went home to Mina</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Circle of Strength and Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anaraine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anaraine/gifts).



> Anaraine gave so many great ideas that I could have written a hundred stories; I only had time for one, unfortunately, but hopefully this touches on a decent mix of the things you wanted.

"You should come with us," Gretel said, tucked round the back of her and Hansel's old house with Mina. At the front of the building, Mina could hear Hansel schooling Ben in something, and the regular thud of Edward's feet as he moved around. Gretel slipped her hand into Mina's, and said quietly, "I'd like that. Hansel too."

Mina brushed a kiss against the corner of Gretel's mouth. "This town is my home."

It was what she always said, and what made Gretel and Hansel look at each other, as though she'd started speaking another language. 

"This house is powerful." Mina touched the wall, feeling the white magic that was slowly healing the years of decay, the damage Ariana had done, the damage Hansel and Gretel and even Mina herself had done. "It will be here, when you return. As it should be."

"If we return," Gretel said. It wasn't, Mina suspected, supposed to sound like a promise, but Mina knew the sound of Gretel making promises to Hansel. After two months of working on the house alongside the siblings, Edward and Ben, Mina thought that she was slowly coming to hear the same sound when Gretel carefully didn't say that they would come back.

Mina smiled and kissed her again. "You will."

*

_First winter_

Hansel had thought that Gretel would, as she sometimes did, be sleeping out with Edward, and so he wasn't prepared for the door of their room to open. Since Ben had left them, several towns back, Hansel and Gretel were the only people who went into their room. He had a gun pointed at the door before it even finished opening.

Gretel paused, one hand still on the knob. Her hair was in slight disarray, which meant either one of the inn's patrons had hassled her, or that she and Edward had been up to whatever it was they did together that Hansel tried not to know about. "A little paranoid, brother-mine?"

"Better than dead." Hansel tucked the gun away again, sinking back to the floor and trying to casually cover his things with the thin blanket on the lower bunk. "Aren't you staying with Edward?"

"Apparently not, so you might as well tell me now what you're trying to hide."

Hansel shrugged, like that would help at all when he knew his face was turning red. He could never hide anything from his sister. "Just checking our supplies."

"The supplies in that pack in the corner?" Gretel dropped onto the bed and leaned back, just missing hitting her head on the top bunk. "Those supplies?"

"My supplies." There was no real reason to be secretive about it – Gretel knew he kept things, and only ever mocked him fairly gently for it, but here and now, he felt like she'd look at what he had and know. 

Actually, it wasn't really a feeling. He _knew_ she'd know.

"Hansel." Gretel nudged the blanket with her toe, and Hansel sighed and pulled it back, revealing his collection of dried flowers, shiny rocks, odd buttons, pretty leaves, and two peg dolls. Thanks from the towns-folk came in bags of silver coins, gratefully received and carefully hoarded; even more carefully hoarded came thanks from the kids they rescued, who pressed their treasures into Hansel's, and occasionally Gretel's, hands with shy smiles and whispered gratitude. Hansel regularly left little heaps of gifts behind, like strange offerings to whoever looked out for witch-hunter children, but he still seemed to fill the pockets of his satchel a little too fast.

Gretel had watched him sort the trinkets enough times that she knew the pattern of it as well as he did, and so it was no surprise at all when she took in the two clearly delineated piles and raised an eyebrow in his direction.

"Mina said buttons are always useful," Hansel said, ignoring how his ears were burning. "And the dolls are – those two girls made me promise I'd give them a good home."

"When did we decide we're going to Mina?" Gretel asked, instead of the teasing Hansel had expected. Maybe because she knew he knew she'd been pocketing rare herbs at the last three towns, when none of them had any use for herbs, rare or otherwise.

"When we took a hunt only two days' travel from her, even though we had a better prospect only a day's travel from where we were at the time?"

Gretel ducked her head, but even through the fall of her loose hair, Hansel could still see the blush that stained her cheeks for a moment, and knew that he wasn't the only one looking forward to going back.

*

_Second summer_

"Like this," Mina said, gesturing with her wand. The tree she pointed it at split neatly down the middle and collapsed in two perfect halves.

"I love watching you do this shit." Hansel grinned at Mina and Gretel, clearly including them both in the comment. Next to him, Edward nodded, his rough face warm with the same affection that always made Gretel so glad he was sticking with them. 

"You," Edward said firmly.

Right. The wand still felt weird and wrong in Gretel's hand, even though she'd helped Mina to craft it, during the month they'd been together over the last winter. Mina looked natural with hers, the way Hansel looked with a gun, and Gretel felt with her crossbow, but Gretel sometimes looked at the wand in her hand and couldn't think of anything but standing in the candy house, holding Hansel's hand and watching their first ever witch burn. 

And that was years ago and over, and Gretel, now, wouldn't let any dark witch get the drop on any of them. She turned, wand in hand, and threw the spell toward the trees. It hit in a burst of green light, and the tree shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.

There was a long moment of silence.

"Well, at least this time it is not on fire," Mina said.

"Though fire's kind of more useful," Hansel added. 

"Fire burn down forest," Edward told him, which was why Edward was Gretel's favorite. 

"You do it, then." Gretel took a step back, ceding the floor to her brother and trying not to look as frustrated as she felt. It was the burning heat of the summer day, was all, and the long hours practicing magic when she wasn't a witch, she was a hunter, one half of Hansel-and-Gretel, most badass team of witch-hunters the world had ever known.

And the child of a white witch, the sometime lover of a white witch, the sister of a man who said the same on both counts, and the woman who could command a troll if she wanted to, though generally she just asked. 

Hansel took the wand from her, which felt even weirder than holding it herself did, no matter what Mina said about the two of them being linked by their mother and the thread of magic that ran strong in Gretel and faint but still there in Hansel. The weirdest thing was the way Hansel's whole body shifted when he made the spell – softer, somehow, like tension draining away.

The tree split neatly down the middle, hung for a moment, and then fell in a perfect replica of Mina's. Hansel waited for the leaves to settle again, then tossed the wand back to Gretel with a shrug and went back to sit by Edward. 

"I hate you right now," Gretel told him. He didn't even practice – he didn't even read any of the books Mina dug out for them. He was just – magic was somehow a thing he could do, and he didn't even care enough to not want it. Some days, it made Gretel want to kill him.

Then she remembered that, eight hunts out of ten, she rescued his ass because violence and daring had always been a thing she could do, even back when they were tiny and alone, when Hansel startled every time a branch broke, and hid behind her like the little kid Gretel had forgotten how to be.

On the other side of the clearing, a fourth tree exploded, sudden and unexpected, into a shower of fine sawdust. 

"What the –" Hansel started, already on his feet. 

"Trolls serve witches," Edward said smugly, and knocked Hansel back down with the same finger he'd just pointed at the tree to make it explode.

*

_Third spring_

"Edward, buddy –" Hansel dropped down beside Edward on the stable floor – "I think we've been sexiled."

Edward, already bundled into the layers of blankets he slept under until the height of summer, grunted something unintelligible back to him.

Hansel rolled himself into his own blankets and closed his eyes. It was kind of nice, sleeping outside with Edward's bulk and warmth next to him. The house was safe in a way that nowhere else could ever be, protected by their mother's magic, by Mina's and Gretel's and even a little bit from Hansel and Edward, and everyone that Hansel loved was close by.

Back in the house, someone cried out, loud with pleasure.

Maybe everyone Hansel loved was a little _too_ close by.

"Mina sex Gretel," Edward offered, or maybe asked – Hansel couldn't usually tell the difference.

"Yeah."

"Hansel too."

"Yeah," Hansel agreed, instead of asking where his own name went in Edward's first comment; whatever the answer was, he likely wouldn't want to hear it. Edward's hand came down on his shoulder, patting in clumsy affection, or maybe comfort. "Thanks, buddy."

Edward shifted, settling into his blankets, and noisily closed his eyes. Hansel rolled himself up tighter and did the same, a little more quietly. In the house, Mina and Gretel had quietened down, which was a mix of blessing and curse. 

Somewhere in the woods, an owl called out. Hansel opened his eyes, listening for a second hoot and staring at the wooden beams above his head. If he didn't think too hard, they were almost like the underside of a hundred beds Gretel had slept in over the years. He closed his eyes, focusing on Edward's deep, slow breathing. 

A gust of wind whipped round the stable, knocking tree branches together. Hansel opened his eyes again. Nothing there except maybe a spider building a web in the corner. He closed his eyes again.

Something ran across Hansel's shoulder, startling him half upright, struggling out of his blankets in time to see a mouse run under the workbench.

"Sleep," Edward said, patting Hansel again. 

"Yeah." Hansel shuffled to his feet and stumbled the few feet to the workbench. It wasn't really low enough, but it was good enough for him to sleep. He rolled under the bench and curled up, small and closed in. Safe, the same way he'd felt that first time, after the candy house.

It had been Gretel's idea, like all their best ideas, after one too many nights of Hansel tossing and turning, leaning over to check again and again until she sat up, shoving her hair out of her face, and glared down at him. "Why aren't you asleep?"

"I can hear something under the bed," Hansel told her. He knew it was stupid, but every time he lay down, he was sure he could feel something reaching for him.

"There's nothing there." Gretel got up, pulled Hansel to his feet and then crouched down, dragging him with her. "See?"

"It might come back," Hansel said, hating how small and scared he sounded. Gretel wasn't afraid – Gretel wasn't afraid of anything. 

Gretel crossed her arms. "It wouldn't get past me."

Hansel knew that, but he didn't want it to get her either. "It wouldn't get past me," he told her.

"Prove it."

Hansel checked under the bed again, making sure there really was nothing there. Then he pulled a blanket down, wrapped himself up in it, and rolled under the bed. 

It was dark under there, and a bit dusty, but the wood over his head shifted as Gretel climbed back into bed, so he knew she was safe. Under the bed, if anything came for them, he could protect her from it, and if anything came in the doors or windows, she could protect him from it.

Hansel closed his eyes, and fell asleep.

*

_Third winter_

They'd picked up the witch on a visit to Ben, and chased her north for a week, almost catching up to her before Hansel took a bad fall and broke two bones in his arm, another in his leg. Edward could carry him, but the fight was never as easy with only one of them, and so they wound further and further north, into the cold of near midwinter and the hell that was chasing witches through snow and ice.

Gretel, for the record, did not appreciate having magically sharpened icicles fall on her head, even if most of them shattered before they could stab her anywhere vital.

She still managed to catch and behead the witch, though not before the witch knocked a house down on Edward's head. 

All of which probably explained the way Mina's eyes widened when she opened the door and found the three of them standing there, bleeding, bruised, and in Hansel's case leaning against the wall and shaking from nearly missing an injection. 

"Hello," she said.

Gretel grinned back. "Miss us?"

*

_Fourth summer_

Mina woke up when the baby kicked, her hand already curving down to feel the tiny foot as it moved. Lying in the dark, she felt cocooned, just her and the baby growing inside of her, held safely inside the house. 

The baby kicked again, gently, like she – Hansel said it could be a boy, there was no reason not, but Mina knew it was a girl – was saying hello.

"I'm here, little girl."

Mina kept her hand there as she reached out. The other three had gone chasing after a serpent witch who'd taken two children from the town only two days ago, leaving them close enough that if Mina concentrated, she could feel them: Edward, solid and stable and fascinated by the baby's every little movement; Hansel, sweet and graceless and full of love for their strange little family; and Gretel, strong and sure and confused but pleased by the existence of a baby girl made from her and Mina.

"Magic," she'd said, the first time the baby moved, curled on one side of Mina with her hand on Mina's stomach. 

"Magic," Mina had agreed. It was rare, but not unheard of, especially amongst white witches. With Hansel mixed up as well, Mina had half-expected... but knowing had still been a surprise, of the best kind.

Their presence was stronger, as she touched on each of the three of them, than the last time. Mina smiled; they were on their way back to her and the baby. 

Her family was coming home.


End file.
